Let’s start off by facing up to a simple fact; we have all fancied wearing an invisibility cloak at some point. Wouldn’t it be great if we could slip one of these things on and, well, become invisible, frankly?

There are lots of reasons for not wanting to be seen and not all of them are illegal. However, until now we could only dream about sneaking about like Harry Potter or whatever that annoying Hobbit is called.

Did I say “until now”? I sure did. Vaguely mad scientists have devised a broadly effective invisibility cloak which can hide objects over a range of different frequencies.

An Improvement on Previous Designs

The chap who has been talking about it is Prof Andrew Alu from the University of Texas in Austin. He said that conventional invisibility cloaks (yes, apparently these do exist) only work over a very limited range of wavelengths. The first one of these developed was a copper cylinder which was revealed to the world in 2006. In 2012 a more advanced model was shown but this could only hide objects from microwaves. With other wavelengths it actually makes the “hidden” object stand out more than it normally would.

The idea prof Alu has been working on with his team is a new electronic system which makes objects transparent from any angle and over a lot of bandwidths. The wise professor said that they are still at an “early stage” but that results so far have been promising.